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The American Employer

A MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF THE BUSINESS
MEN OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA WHO HIRE LABOR

Published by The American Employer Publishing Co., Chamber of Commerce Building, Cleveland, O.

Vol. I

August, 1912

No. 1

Editorial

What This Magazine Will Be

THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER gives greeting in this, its first issue, to the business men of the United States and Canada.

This magazine has been started by its publishers and editors to cover a field in its entirety entered here and there at corners and edges by a number of other publications which make excursions into its border territory, but which is not fully traversed by any other paper or magazine on earth.

In a sentence we will devote our energies to the interests of the men who by their mentality, originality and industry alone afford the opportunity for systematic production and give employment to millions of men. Our news columns will handle, concisely and as interestingly as we know how the latest phases of world happenings in the realms of labor, economy, legislation, judicial determination and business progress. There will be nothing that we think will be of benefit or interest to the American business man that we will hesitate to print.

Editorially we are not going to be governed by fear of incurring incidental adverse criticism. What we think, we will say. While we will fight to the finish unlawful, oppressive and tyrannical aggression on the part of organized labor, if we note any action on the part of employer or employers, the continuation of which will tend in the long run to injure the business interests for which we stand, we will point it out.

Our face is set against the boycott, the greatest menace to freedom in the civilized world. We also discountenance sympathetic strikes.

We believe in the inherent right of a man to run his own business. This includes his right to contract with a labor organization for a closed shop. If he so contracts, we believe he ought to carry out the contract as long only as the other side obeys its provisions, but we advise him not to make such a contract, for we believe in the open shop.

This paper stands for law, law enforcement and orderly government. Our influence will always be against rioting, assault, property destruction and

violence.

The criminal purpose and intent of the. Industrial Workers of the World are repugnant to us.

We are opposed to socialism, even of the milder sort, as a menace to business, opposed to progress and against human nature.

We shall aim to make this magazine be a newspaper, in the sense that we shall give to our readers news that the daily papers do not. A great deal takes place in the industrial world that is disregarded by the daily papers and the press associations, and much that is actually offered by the press associations and is rejected or minimized by the papers in the vast volume of news of all kinds that they handle.

Another thing; business men with large interests only live twenty-four hours a day. Time does not suffice to permit them to inform themselves on current matters of general importance to employers, because they must devote themselves to the large matters of their own business. Many of them have abandoned trying to do anything more than this and have philosophically resigned themselves to the conclusion that what they do not know will not hurt them. We shall aim to post these busy men, concisely, so as not to take too much of their time, on some of this general information about current things, under the surface, that it is really valuable for them to know.

Our columns are open to letters of reasonable length from business men on all pertinent subjects. We make the qualification as to length, because it is our purpose not to print any article so long that busy men will not have time or inclination to read it.

We bespeak from the business world interest and help in the work we are going to do. No suggestion will be ignored and any helpful and practicable suggestion will be accepted. Co-operate with us for the good of normal, healthful, sane, prosperous business, the basis of the welfare and content of any people.

One Gross Injustice of Boycotts Among Many

This magazine hopes to be instrumental some day, and some day soon we hope, in doing away with a great injustice which has to a greater or less extent, up to this time, been upheld by the courts. This injustice is manifested by the man who parades up and down before another man's place of business, carrying a sign reading: "Don't patronize; unfair to union labor."

We are convinced that this sort of attack upon a man's business is neither equitable nor legal, previous court decisions to the contrary notwithstanding. We believe that in instances heretofore the issue has not been submitted to courts in a way to involve the real and important element and that courts have made the mistake of distinguishing between "unlawful" and "peaceful” picketing. There is no such thing as peaceful picketing.

A summarization of the view that courts have taken on the subject is to be found on page 109, section 72, of "Martin on the Modern Law of Labor Unions". The author, after drawing attention to the fact that in a preceding chapter he has shown that in aid of a lawful strike it is lawful to use peaceable persuasion and argument to induce other workmen, not bound by time contracts not to enter service where the strike is in progress, says: "By parity of reasoning it is not unlawful for members of a union or their sympathizers to use in aid of a justifiable strike peaceable argument and persuasion to induce customers of the person against whom the strike is in operation, to withhold their patronage from him, although their purpose in doing so is to injure the business of their former employer and constrain him to yield to their demands."

There has also been, we understand, a disposition on the part of the courts to be governed by a man's right to walk along the street as long as he conducts himself peaceably, does not obstruct the walk, keeps moving, offers

violence to nobody and is guilty of no conduct obnoxious to the passing public. This right of the individual is, of course, greatly modified, to say the least, when he walks with a number of other people, but it has been applied to the single picket and the man with the sign is a picket and more often than not, a single picket. We certainly cannot believe that this important issue can be decided on a sidewalk ordinance or even on a man's undoubted right to walk along the street.

That some day or other a court decision will be handed down that will decide the issue on broad grounds and real merit, we firmly believe.

There cannot be such a thing as a peaceful picket. A strike is war; the men themselves admit it. The picket may be courteous. He may even wear a sinile. He may even say: "We won't do a thing to you," and he may say it reassuringly, without the accent on the word "thing", but his very presence is a deterrent to a timid person in the time of a strike, and a strike, we say again, is war.

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In the case where the man carries a sign in front of a mercantile establishment and does not say a word, he is a deterrent. A man leaves his office to buy a shirt. Other things equal, he proceeds along the streets till he reaches the haberdashery, selects a shirt, pays for it and goes his way. No mental effort is required. Suppose, however, he meets the man with the sign. reason why perhaps he ought not to go in that store is presented to him. He weighs it pro and con. Perhaps he concludes that he ought not to patronize that merchant; perhaps he concludes it is all right. In any event, a question for determination has been presented to him. An effort is necessary in order that he may carry out his purpose to buy. The thing is surely in restraint of trade and commerce. Of course, another man might be so outraged in his conception of what is proper and decent that he would buy two shirts and some collars and ties besides, before leaving the store, but he would be a man of decided ideas and a determined character and not the average man by any means.

Everybody admits that if a man has a grievance against a place of business he can tell his friend his experience and advise him not to trade there. That is the right of free speech, but when the principle is applied to many men, acting in concert and with an end to gain, we believe it is no longer a question of free speech, but an overt act in fact, whether or not in law, in furtherance of a conspiracy to injure a man's business.

If a man strikes another, he can be arrested and punished for assault and battery. Why, if he tries to hit him and fails he has committed an attempted assault. He does not even have to strike or kick to be guilty of an offense against the law. If he spits upon a man or tries to spit upon him, he is so guilty.

If a man runs a restaurant, or a moving picture show, and the writer has seen the outrageous affront to decency in front of both kinds of establishments within a very short time, the man who openly declares the business man unfair and solicits trade away from him, morally commits an assault upon him. He assaults his business, which is his and which as a means of his family's support, is a part of him. He assaults his rights as a citizen and his interests as a taxpayer and part supporter of the municipal institution, which protects the rights of the sign carrier himself. He assaults his constitutional right as a citizen of the United States to the pursuit of happiness, happiness being alone possible if a man be self-supporting.

Again, there is at least 50 per cent of a certainty that he is libeling the merchant. It is at least as likely as not that the merchant has not been unfair to him or to anybody.

May it not be conspiracy? It is at all events the result of concerted, preceding action on the part of a number of people; all the members of the union perhaps, or at all events its officials or executive committee. It should be borne in mind that in conspiracy lawfulness or unlawfulness of intent is a

question as well as lawfulness or unlawfulness of the act to be performed; and it should also be borne in mind that if a thing not peaceful is unlawful, then picketing is unlawful, for there is not and cannot be peaceful picketing, any more than the sentinel in time of war is peaceful.

In every sale there are two elements; the seller and the buyer. It would be interesting to know what a court would say as to the legality of some man trying to prevent a merchant from reaching his store to sell to his customers. How about the other element in the sale-the buyer? Is it lawful to try to prevent the purchaser from going to the store?

We contend that in plain reasoning this sort of thing contravenes the most primary notions of equity; that it flies in the face of plain justice. It is our purpose to watch it and everything like it, and the moment that we can step into the breach in aid of and to assist with every influence at our command, the effort of a person aggrieved and outraged by such tactics, we mean to do it. If it were possible in our first year to take an important part leading to a court decision on what we believe to be the real merits of this issue, we would feel that our year's work had been justified by the one result alone.

In the department in this issue devoted to court decisions are two from New York state, one by a state court and the other by a federal court, which are hopeful along anti-boycott lines. Both decisions are comparatively recent. Boycotting attempts involving threats on the part of organizations of laborers not to handle goods not produced under exclusively union conditions were forbidden. Also, under a still separate head, we give the comments of an American Anti-Boycott Association bulletin bearing on the beneficial effect of such court decisions.

Fulsome Praise from Politicians

It is greatly to be regretted that normal and satisfactory relations between employers and employes are retarded by politicians who by words of general praise, specifying nothing, inflate so-called labor leaders with an undue sense of their importance and create in the minds of party voters in the ranks of labor the belief that since party leaders say these men are great, why then, of course, they are great. As a matter of fact, the men at the head of organizations of laboring men are almost certain to be men of less honesty of purpose and of greater selfishness than the rank and file of the organization's membership. Of course, these politicians think that when they do this they capture the labor vote. They are mistaken; they do nothing of the kind.

General Isaac R. Sherwood is an Ohio congressman. He lives in Toledo. In the national house of representatives, May 2, 1912, General Sherwood said: "Samuel Gompers is the ablest and most conservative labor leader in either the United States or Europe. For thirty times he has been elected president of the American Federation of Labor, covering a period of thirty years. All this time he has been constantly in the limelight, and during all these years of his wearing work for the weary workers there has never been even a suspicion against his honesty or his fidelity among the workers. He has always stood for law and order. He has opposed strikes, and has, for the past decade, favored peaceful arbitration. He has opposed arraying labor against capital. He has devoted the best part of his robust life to every humane movement for the moral and physical betterment of his fellow workers."

With one thing that General Sherwood said we must agree. Samuel Gompers has certainly been in the limelight. The general did not specify in what way the limelight shed its dazzling rays on Mr. Gompers. Had he done so, his words would no doubt have rivaled the limelight itself in illuminating

power.

Again General Sherwood said that for thirty years Mr. Gompers had been elected president of the American Federation of Labor. True; but the

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